On this page: Licinus – Licymnia – Licymnius

.LICINUS.

more probable' that he meant to refer to the less celebrated of the two* writers. (Krause, Vitae et Fragm. vet. Hist. Rom. p. 213; Perizon. Animad. Hist. p. 349.)

LICINUS, PO'RCIUS. 1. L. porcius lici­nus, lived in the second Punic war. He is first mentioned in b. c. 211, when he served with dis­tinction as legate in the army that was besieging Capua. In the following year (b. c. 210) he was plebeian aedile, and with his colleague, Q. Catius, celebrated the public games with great splendour. He was,praetor in b.c. 207,and obtained Cisalpine Gaul as his province. In co-operation with the consuls of the year, C. ClaudiusNero and.M. Livius Salinator, he had a share in the glory of the defeat of Hasdrubal, the brother of Hannibal, at the battle of the Metaurus, in Umbria. (Liv. xxvi. 6, xxviL 6, 35, 36, 39, 46—48.)

2. L. porcius licinus, the son of the preceding, was praetor b, c. 193, and received Sardinia as his province. He sued unsuccessfully for the consul­ ship at first, but at length obtained it, in b. c. 184; and in conjunction with his colleague, P. ClaudiusPulcher, carried on the war against the Ligurians. (Liv. xxxiv. 54, 55, xxxix. 32, 33, 45, xl. 34; Cic. Brut. 15.) .

3. L. porcius licinus, the son of No. 2, dedi­cated, as duumvir in b. c. 181, the temple to Venus Erycina, which his father had vowed in the Ligurian war. This temple, which was called after the cele­brated temple of Venus at Eryx in Sicily, was situated outside the Colline gate, and is mentioned by Livy, by prolepsis, as in existence as early as the year b. c. 202. (Lir. xxx. 38.) Licinus was appointed in B. c. 172 to conduct to Brundusium from the docks at Rome the fleet which was to convey to Greece the troops destined for the war against Perseus. (Liv; xl. 34 ; Strab. vi. p. 272; Ov. Fast, iv, 874; App. B. C.i. 93; Liv. xlii.

27.)

COIN OF L. PQRC1US LICINUS.

5. porcius licjnus, an ancient Roman'poet,

VOL. H.

4. L. porcius licinus, occurs only on coins, of which a specimen is given below. The obverse represents the head of Pallas, with L. porci lici. ; the reverse the naked figure of Mars driving a chariot and hurling a spear, with the legend l. Lie. cn, dom. We have coins of the Aurelia and Cosconia gentes exactly the same as the pre­ceding, with the sole exception of the difference of name, those of the former bearing the name of M. AureliusScaurus, and those of the latter L. Cos-conius. [CoscoNius; scaurus.] Now, as all the three sets of coins have on the obverse L. Lie. cn. dom., it is supposed that they were struck in the censorship of L. LiciniusCrassus and Cn. Do-mitius Ahenobarbus, b. c. 92, and that L. Por-cius Licinus, M. AureliusScaurus, and L. Cosconius, were triumvirs of the Mint in that year. Eckhel (vol. v. p. 396), however, thinks that these coins must have been struck at an earlier time ; but on this point see Drumann, Gesch. Roms^ vol. v, p. 95.

785

LICYMN1US.

whom A. Gellius places between Valerius Aeditu us and Q. LutatiusCatulus, consul B. c. 104, and who, therefore, probably lived in the latter part of the second century, b. c. Gellius. quotes an epigram of Licinus, which seems to be taken from the Greek, and likewise cites the commencement of a poem of his on the history of Roman poetry, written in trochaic tetrameters. He seems to be the same as the Porcius mentioned in the life of Terence, ascribed to Suetonius, but must not be confounded, as he has been by some modern writers, with the consul of this name. [No. 2.] (Gell. xix. 9, xvii. 2; AntM. Lot. Nos. 25, 26, ed. Meyer ; Madvig, de L. Attii Didascalws, p. 20.)

LICYMNIA, spoken of by Horace (Carm. ii. 12. 13, &c.), is maintained at great length by Weichert {Poetar. Latin. Reliquiae, p, 462, &c.) to be the same as Terentia, the wife ojf Maecenas ; but it seems impossible that Horace could have used such amatory language as he employs in this ode in reference to the wife of Maecenas. (Coinp. Teuffel, in Zeitschriftjur die AltertJiumsw, p. 46, &c., 1845.)

LICYMNIUS (Awct^wos), a son of Electryou and the Phrygian slave Mideia, and consequently a half-brother of Alcmene. (Paus. iii. 15. § 4.) He was married to Perimede, by whom he became the father of Oeonus, Argeius, and Melas. He was a friend of Heracles, whose son Tlepoleinus slew him, according to some unintentionally, and according to others in a fit of anger. (Pind. Ol. vii. 50, &c.; Apollod. ii. 8. § 2, ii. 4. § 5, comp. Horn. II. ii. 663.) His tomb was shown in after- times at Argos, (Paus. ii. 22. § 8 ; Plut. Pyrrh. 34.) [L. SJ

LICYMNIUS(AudfuHos). 1. Of Chios, a distinguished dithyrambic poet, of uncertain date. Some writers, on the authority of a passage of Sextus Empiricus (Adv. Math. 49, p. 447, xi. pp. 700, 701; Fabric, p. 447; Pacard. p. 556, Bekker), place him before Simonides; but this is not clearly made out, and it is perhaps more likely, from all we know of his poetry, that he be­ longed to the later Athenian dithyrambic school about the end of the fourth century b. c.; indeed Spengel and Schneidewin identify him with the rhetorician (No. 2). He is mentioned by Aristotle (Rhet. iii, 12), in conjunction with Chaeremon, as among the poets whose works were rather fit for reading than for exhibition (dvayvacmKofy. Among the poems ascribed to him was one in praise of health ; a pretty sure indication of a late date, if we could be certain that the poem was his. A fragment of this poem is preserved, by Sextus. Empiricus (/, c.), in which three lines out of six are. identical with lines in the paean of Ariphron to health ; and it seems likely that it was a mere mistake in Sextus to quote the poem as by Licym- nius. A poem of his on the legend of Endymion is mentioned by Athenaeus (xiiu p. 564, c.), who also refers to one of his dithyrambs on the love of Argynnus for Hymenaeus (xiii. p. 603, d.). Par- thenius (c, 22) quotes from him an account of the taking of Sardis, which has every mark of a late and fictitious embellishment of the event. Eusta- Horn. Od. iii. 267) mentions AiKvpviov oiSfo. (Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. pp. 839, 840 ; Schmidt, Diatrib. in Dithyramb, pp. 84 T—86 ; Ulrici, Gesch. d. Hellen. Dichtk. vol. ii. p. 497; Bode* Gesch. d. Lyr. Dichtk. vol. ii. pp. 303, 304,) .